Webmail.us Taps Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) Platform for Email Data Backups

November 7, 2006; 05:27 AM
Webmail.us, a leading provider of email hosting services to more than 27,000 small, medium, and geographically dispersed businesses, just released a new email data backups platform that leverages the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) from Amazon Web Services. The new platform, codenamed Vault, replaces a legacy tape backup system with a faster, more cost-efficient, online storage solution. Email data is now encrypted and backed up to Amazon S3, and then replicated between multiple Amazon data centers. The company will continue to backup email data nightly and provide restoration capabilities for 14 days.

The first version of Vault had several goals:

* Data backups need to happen without impacting server load and end user performance.

* Data backups need to be cost effective and scale with growth.

* Data backups must take place nightly, within a scheduled window of time.

* Incremental data backups need to be smarter than conventional backups systems, recognize file name changes (common in mail systems), and avoid needlessly backing up the same file multiple times.

* Data needs to be stored in an environment where restorations are quick and easy.

* Data needs to be replicated across multiple data centers for redundancy purposes.

* Data needs to be encrypted so that email messages and email addresses cannot be deciphered.

"We spent quite a while researching internal and third-party solutions that could replace our legacy tape backup system,"explained Bill Boebel, chief technology officer at Webmail.us, Inc. "We realized that by working with Amazon S3, we would be able to rapidly accomplish all of our goals, as well as establish a platform upon which we can build down the road. Vault will provide a foundation for future services, such as email archiving. We're excited about that."

"Webmail.us is a great example of a company that's able to leverage the web-scale computing infrastructure offered by Amazon Web Services to lower costs and gain performance," said Steve Rabuchin, director of developer relations for Amazon Web Services. "Webmail.us is now free to focus on their core business because they can rely on the infrastructure resources, expertise, and cost-efficiencies of Amazon. And that's exactly what we want to happen with Amazon Web Services -- we build the 'muck,' so companies like Webmail.us don't have to."

Pat Matthews, chief executive officer at Webmail.us, explains that the Amazon Web Services platform is "a natural fit for us and our customers. Their scalability, both from an infrastructure and a cost perspective, made them very attractive. But more importantly, we appreciate their business model. Unlike many companies in their class, they've decided to charge for their services as opposed to monetizing user data by selling advertising around it. Our customers rely on us to protect their data and Amazon only adds value in that regard."

Webmail.us also uses two of Amazon's other web services to manage email data after it has been backed up to the S3 platform. To delete old data after it ages, Webmail.us uses Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS). "This allows our data processing to occur close to the data itself," explains Boebel. "And since data transfer between Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 is free, this was an easy design choice."

Webmail.us has been experiencing rapid growth, adding more than 18,000 businesses to its email hosting system in the last twelve months.

For more information on Amazon Web Services, visit http://aws.amazon.com.

About Webmail.us, Inc.
Webmail.us, along with its growing community of private-label reseller partners, provides more than 27,000 small, medium, and geographically dispersed businesses with email hosting protected from spam, computer viruses, phishing attacks, and other security threats facing corporate email systems. The company manages and maintains the email software and hosting infrastructure, freeing up personnel resources and eliminating the need for organizations to purchase email-related hardware, software, and security services—all for a fraction of the cost of purchasing and managing the solution in-house. The Email Hosting System™ is housed in carrier-grade data centers to ensure maximum uptime. Founded in 1999, Webmail.us is privately held and headquartered in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center. To learn more, please visit www.webmail.us or call 866.392.3336.